If anyone wants a mostly neutral take what's going on in Baltimore right now

[Jabulani Jonny]

... "Us against them" ....

No comment on Baltimore right now.  But this thread needs some music.  Seems appropriate.

[midwayfair]

A drum circle has broken out in front of the CVS that was destroyed last night:

https://v.cdn.vine.co/r/videos/1DDDBE61FA1204876035330609152_37ae3a5df63.1.5.7450746681842076568.mp4?versionId=fI_EDTn08qFZZ13qCHFeocmrVVcs7BgQ

[lincolnic]

Thanks for talking about this, Jon. I generally come here to talk about pedals and not politics, but I think this is important.

For everyone who dismisses rioters as a knee-jerk reaction, I'd like to politely ask that you read this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/nonviolence-as-compliance/391640/

In case you who don't have the time, here's the main takeaway:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

Riots like this are not the result of one isolated incident. They're the result of systematic racism and oppression by an overwhelming force that refuses to change. Here's what Martin Luther King, Jr. had to say about riots:

It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.

Consider what that means, "a riot is the language of the unheard." There were massive, peaceful protests for about a week after Freddie Gray died. You didn't hear about those and they're still not really being talked about. (Here's an NY Times article from a week ago that mentions them: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/us/another-mans-death-another-round-of-questions-for-the-police-in-baltimore.html) When did you start to hear? When the rioting started.

I think many of us may not be aware of the problem media has with riots. I personally didn't think much about it until Ferguson forced me to last year. When black people riot, they're presented to us as "thugs" or "looters". When white people riot, nobody cares. For instance: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/white-people-rioting-for-no-reason.html

Is it less legitimate to riot because yet another black man died in police custody than because your baseball team won a game? I was in school in Boston in 2004 when the Red Sox won and caused the riot pictured in that link; the norm for those situations was for people to start flipping over cars and breaking everything they could. One girl was killed by the police. I say "those situations" because this was a regular occurrence. If the Red Sox or the Patriots won, there'd be riots. I lived around the corner from all of this. It's not okay.

While we all wish reform could occur without violence on either side, the real fact of the matter is that the police use military force on their own civilians as a matter of course. Peaceful protest can't work when the state is throwing tear gas and pepper spray at you, when peaceful protesters are kettled and treated as enemies simply for making their voices heard. The protest movement is called Black Lives Matter because they do, but as a country, our normal course of action is to let centuries of institutionalized racism take precedence. In a very real way, these riots are literally self-defense. They have no power to resist with except violence.

Try not to think of it as "what do the rioters hope to accomplish?" Think of this more as the natural consequence of the state's (and media's) actions. I'm not asking anyone to condone destruction and looting, but it's important to view the rioters as people who deserve understanding and compassion before dismissing them out-of-hand. Someone on another forum I read said this, and I think it's an excellent summation of the topic: "I don't think violence will necessarily solve any problems but I also cannot blame a race of people who are being systematically oppressed and murdered for being angry enough to throw bricks at their killers."

Slate writer Jamelle Bouie also said it well:
"...one can both disagree with an act but also understand the impulse behind it.

Shocking, I know." (https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/592899257797111808)

This is a very complex and charged subject, and I'm not making any assumptions about anyone's statements or thoughts here. But I really believe we can't have a discussion about this unless we're willing to address the question of why these things happen. (And by "we", I mean we as a country as much as we in this thread right now.)

[Luke51411]

I'm not saying that I know otherwise but I wouldn't go on assuming that there are no Black members of this community. You have to remember as well that probably more people browse the forum without posting than the numbers that post regularly.

[lincolnic]

You're completely right, Luke, and I'll edit my post accordingly. Thanks.

[Luke51411]

You're completely right, Luke, and I'll edit my post accordingly. Thanks.

No worries man, its an assumption that could easily be made by anyone and could just as easily be incorrect.

[playpunk]

Hey so I feel like I owe an apology for the long and politically charged rant - the only appropriate emotion right now is support for the people of Baltimore. I'm going to go back and delete the message when I get to a real computer.

Wishing you guys all the best - it's a difficult situation and I hope for a good resolution for both sides.

I don't think you needed to delete it. It's okay to say what's on your mind; how else can people learn to understand all aspects of the situation if everyone just stops talking about it? As long as someone's not spreading hate, any discussion is welcome. I'm the only one who promised to provide some neutral information.

I agree.  Your post did have some opinions, but I don't remember thinking they were inflammatory in any way.

At some point, discussion is going to have to happen so that we can reason out why things like this happen and what we can do to avoid it in the future.  As long as there is a growing chasm of distrust between the police and the citizens they are bound to protect, this is not going to get better.

As long as law enforcement officers keep killing people, it isn't going to get better. Nor should it. I don't trust any law enforcement officer, and you shouldn't either.

[midwayfair]

For everyone who dismisses rioters as a knee-jerk reaction, I'd like to politely ask that you read this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/nonviolence-as-compliance/391640/

I was going to post that earlier this morning, but I got distracted, and a little depressed. It's simply the best mid-term perspective.

Part of the problem in talking about this is that full context involves decades and decades of local politics, stuff that goes way beyond the relationship between the police and the citizens; it's part of the fabric of Baltimore. It's absolutely exhausting to think about just the racial politics of this city, never mind the perennial post-1970s economic problems. The city is amazingly self-segregated, for instance -- Go two blocks in any direction and you can end up in a different world. I have a firefighter friend who calls it "two blocks from Armageddon." [For reference, my neighborhood is mixed and pretty diverse -- both of my immediate neighbors are black professionals, there is a mixed-race family across the street, and two neighbors across the alley are gay couples. People would still refer to my neighborhood as "white Baltimore," though.] People get irrationally scared to walk around in parts of the city and that drives housing choices. It's self-perpetuating. And if you want to know how far back it goes, there are several confederate monuments in Baltimore, and none to the Union. And the KKK had a presence in a neighborhood a mile from my home until early last decade.

2:00 and 3:30 "purges" were planned. One of the 3:30 ones is a little closer to my house. The 2:00 one looks to have not happened.

Police exchanged gunfire with multiple gangs (as in Bloods, Crips, and Black Guerilla Family, not "gangs" of protesters) on the West Side in the past half hour. This wasn't unexpected; there was a press release yesterday about a credible threat (feel free to browse Twitter for the conspiracy theory responses to that if you need a good head shaking). Police are spread very thin watching large groups of peaceful protestors. Support police are coming from as far as Hagerstown, which is an hour and a half drive west of Baltimore. There's supposed to be 500 more National Guard deployed today, but I haven't seen word on when they'll arrive.

I am now taking bets on whether the end game is a more militarized police force or body cameras*.

*A body camera bill was vetoed by the mayor recently. There were major problems with it, but it was vetoed shortly before the Freddie Gray incident. Bad timing for sure.

[Luke51411]

Hey so I feel like I owe an apology for the long and politically charged rant - the only appropriate emotion right now is support for the people of Baltimore. I'm going to go back and delete the message when I get to a real computer.

Wishing you guys all the best - it's a difficult situation and I hope for a good resolution for both sides.

I don't think you needed to delete it. It's okay to say what's on your mind; how else can people learn to understand all aspects of the situation if everyone just stops talking about it? As long as someone's not spreading hate, any discussion is welcome. I'm the only one who promised to provide some neutral information.

I agree.  Your post did have some opinions, but I don't remember thinking they were inflammatory in any way.

At some point, discussion is going to have to happen so that we can reason out why things like this happen and what we can do to avoid it in the future.  As long as there is a growing chasm of distrust between the police and the citizens they are bound to protect, this is not going to get better.

As long as law enforcement officers keep killing people, it isn't going to get better. Nor should it. I don't trust any law enforcement officer, and you shouldn't either.

Again this is a complicated issue. I've known a few great officers, most of them are just trying to do their job, and then there are some bad ones that just sour the whole image and bring down others with them. For a time I worked in an inner city neighborhood with parolees and part or the program there were a few officers that really took things to heart. They went out of their way to get to know the residents of the neighborhood and the people they were working with to the point that some of the parolees consider them friends and brothers. There are good officers out there.

[madbean]

I don't have time to pick through this thread ATM but I will because I am interested in the opinions being expressed. My quick and dirty take:

Of course, I hate violence. True civility is being able to ascend from it even when it is being perpetrated on you (or your community). But, I also understand the reasons for it and it is important to recognize root causes, esp. in Baltimore and elsewhere. As much as I do not want to see people destroying communities and attacking police, I also think that police have to stop.fucking. killing people indiscriminately and getting away with it. And we need to address the out of control corruption that is happening. I'm not talking about legitimate defense of themselves or others when it comes to dealing with real bad guys...the ones that pose and immediate and unarguable threat.

But, the level of violence and oppression police forces are exuding on communities across the US is disgusting. The militarization, the willingness of officers to protect their buddies that are committing civil offenses and abusing power, the hair triggers..it's just got to stop. It's a subject I've been following for a few years but I can't claim to have the answers either. It does seem to me that we need another layer of civil oversight on police forces by the communities they protect. That's kinda the only thing I've been able to come up with.

Anyway I will read some more of the posts when I have more time. I'm okay with this continuing to be a discussion as long as everyone follows the normal rules of conduct we have here.

[GermanCdn]

I'm really on the fence on both sides of this issue (if it's possible to be).  I've got no skin in the game either way, nor have I spent an exhorbitant amount of time researching the backstory to what's going on in Baltimore.  And I'm Canadian, and typically our civil unrest is usually an order of magnitude less than in the US, for whatever reason.

Where I run into problems with the protesters (or rioters, depending on the context or perspective I guess) is where the line is between people who are legitimately trying to increase awareness/air their grievances, and people who are just piling on or taking advantage of the situation to engage in either gang mentality or in criminal behaviour.  And the example I have for that is this.  A number of years ago, when the G8 summit was held in Montreal (I think), there was a big protest, rock throwing, riot police, all that fun stuff.  A good friend of mine and her boyfriend were part of the protest, and afterwards I asked what they were protesting, as I was curious.  The response I got back was something to the extent of a generic "we were protesting inequity and inequality between the G8 countries and the third world."  When I asked what their specific concern was, neither one of them could cite a single item which they were concerned with, and it basically came out that they were protesting because they were students and it was the popular thing to do in Montreal that weekend.  I often wonder what percentage of protestors/rioters fall into that category.  And looting isn't protesting.  It's stealing with a lower likelihood of getting caught because the cops are busy with other people.

The number of police involved incidents have been on the rise this year, or at least much more visible, be it because of social media or just the general media's increased sensitivity to it.  There is no justification for excessive use of force.  But I also wonder if when we're seeing these video clips that get posted if we're getting the whole story (again, not suggesting that anyone that got assaulted/tasered/killed by the cops deserved it).

I am probably a little too sympathetic with the police in most cases.  My best friend in the entire world is a 15 year vetern of the police force, including 5 years on the SWAT team.  He holds the Order of Canada for an incident he was involved in a number of years ago.  I counselled him for a number of months after that incident (and a couple of others), and the details of what he told me will haunt me until I die.  Most cops are good, if not great, people.  It's unfortunate that a few bad apples ruin it on a very large, public scale for the rest of them.

[vizcities]

I'm also in Bmore and I feel like Jon's done a great job of explaining exactly what's happening here.  That said, if you're looking for further legitimate, unspun info, I'd point to both the Coates article and the following:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/how-baltimore-riots-began-mondawmin-purge

http://mic.com/articles/116714/7-facts-everyone-needs-to-know-to-understand-what-s-happening-in-baltimore

http://www.teabreakfast.com/the-more-you-know-whats-not-being-shown-in-baltimore/

Also, currently viral on Facebook:

From eyewitness Dan McGregor

"I want everyone to know what's happening in Baltimore.

I rolled up to Penn and North at 10:30 AM. There was a massive clean-up effort organized to start at 10 AM. When I got there, everything in the public realm was already cleaned up, and people were cleaning up the legendary trash piles that are strewn randomly about the city (if you live in a poorer city or a poorer neighborhood, you know what I'm talking about, the piles of trash that are just around town). The end result was a west side that was going to be cleaner than it was to begin with.

There were 100's of people out, all races, all ages, all demeanors. Totally peaceful, quiet. It was amazing. Everybody was working hand-in-hand to clean up the city, spread out along North Ave and its immediate side streets. People were talking about what was happening and why. People were expressing themselves. This is ideal.

At around 11:30 AM, there was a large-scale police mobilization at Penn and North. No idea why. A bus, an armored vehicle, several vans, several cars. A medium-sized police force, in full riot gear, with automatic weapons, some National Guard troops. The vehicles were all Anne Arundell County and I'm guessing the cops were too.

The cops showed up and shut down a couple of blocks. They cut people off from their residencies and places of work. They stopped people from cleaning. They formed a line and inched forward, telling people to get off the street, that this is a State of Emergency so this street has to be shut down.

Why? Why were the cops there? Why were they shutting down the street? Why did they stop a community effort to clean up? Why did they disrupt the daily business of residents and employees? Why did they arrive in full riot gear to deal with 100's of people armed only with shovels, brooms, trashbags, and gloves?

This is agitating. This is belligerent. This is picking a fight. If the cops hadn't come, nothing would have happened beyond people cleaning and going about another day of their lives. Now that the cops are there, trying to intimidate and agitate, there's a risk of things exploding again.

You know what I saw? I saw police yelling at people, intimidating people, making moves without provocation. And I saw gang members calmly, reasonably asking people to move, asking people to play along, asking people to stay calm and not to provoke the police.

The media won't tell you that. The police state is REAL. This shit HAPPENS. The police are NOT here to protect ANYBODY right now. They are BRINGING THE DANGER WITH THEM. They are BRINGING THE VIOLENCE WITH THEM.

THAT IS REAL, DON'T LET THE NEWS TELL YOU OTHERWISE, THAT IS REAL."

Basically, the national media has totally punted on this story and ignored roughly five major points:

1.) Local gangs created a truce to allow for uninterrupted protests, not the opposite.  One of the major reasons violence initially broke out was that drunk, white, belligerent Orioles fans were mad about the peaceful protests; gangs, by comparison, have been by-and-large helpful and compliant, as most of the violence has directly affected where they live.  (Yes, I know this seems counterintuitive - it's crazy!  But true.)

2.) The police, with their heavy-handed/half-militant approach to every new situation, have catalyzed chaotic action every step of the way. 

3.) "Protest" and "riot" are not synonyms; like I said, 1000s of protestors have been completely peaceful and, in many cases, protests have been put together by community organizations, churches, college students, and so on.

4.) The level of institutional racism in Bmore is staggering.  Walking into West Baltimore is like walking into another planet, one where it's entirely believable that a cop would just pick up and cripple an unarmed, innocent guy just because he was black and dressed like a "thug" or whatever.  People are angry because this is so commonplace - because it seems so obvious and inevitable, which makes it grotesque and (yes) institutional.  On the plus side, they also feel emboldened by recent media attention for Michael Brown and Eric Garner to actually do something about it.  Unfortunately, that rage came out in less-than-productive ways.

Oh, and 5.) Half of Baltimore hit the streets to clean up the affected areas today.  Most places - even the burnt ones - were swept, mopped, and spit-shined by noon.  There is rebuilding to be done, but our local communities have come together in a very real, profound way.  Bmore hasn't declined over the space of a weekend into some den of iniquity where people in hoods and scarfs delight in poaching Doritos from their local CVS before torching it; rather, crimes of that nature have been isolated and condemned roundly by 99.9999% of our citizens. 

Bmore isn't a hellhole right now and chaos doesn't reign.  You should seriously question any sensationalized accounts you see or hear, as they completely dodge the reason things have gotten hairy in the first place: the police murdered an innocent guy - Freddie Gray - and tried to cover it up.  And they still haven't fired anyone over this!  That's the story.

[Jefe]

Thanks for talking about this, Jon. I generally come here to talk about pedals and not politics, but I think this is important.

For everyone who dismisses rioters as a knee-jerk reaction, I'd like to politely ask that you read this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/nonviolence-as-compliance/391640/

In case you who don't have the time, here's the main takeaway:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

Riots like this are not the result of one isolated incident. They're the result of systematic racism and oppression by an overwhelming force that refuses to change. Here's what Martin Luther King, Jr. had to say about riots:

It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.

Consider what that means, "a riot is the language of the unheard." There were massive, peaceful protests for about a week after Freddie Gray died. You didn't hear about those and they're still not really being talked about. (Here's an NY Times article from a week ago that mentions them: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/us/another-mans-death-another-round-of-questions-for-the-police-in-baltimore.html) When did you start to hear? When the rioting started.

I think many of us may not be aware of the problem media has with riots. I personally didn't think much about it until Ferguson forced me to last year. When black people riot, they're presented to us as "thugs" or "looters". When white people riot, nobody cares. For instance: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/white-people-rioting-for-no-reason.html

Is it less legitimate to riot because yet another black man died in police custody than because your baseball team won a game? I was in school in Boston in 2004 when the Red Sox won and caused the riot pictured in that link; the norm for those situations was for people to start flipping over cars and breaking everything they could. One girl was killed by the police. I say "those situations" because this was a regular occurrence. If the Red Sox or the Patriots won, there'd be riots. I lived around the corner from all of this. It's not okay.

While we all wish reform could occur without violence on either side, the real fact of the matter is that the police use military force on their own civilians as a matter of course. Peaceful protest can't work when the state is throwing tear gas and pepper spray at you, when peaceful protesters are kettled and treated as enemies simply for making their voices heard. The protest movement is called Black Lives Matter because they do, but as a country, our normal course of action is to let centuries of institutionalized racism take precedence. In a very real way, these riots are literally self-defense. They have no power to resist with except violence.

Try not to think of it as "what do the rioters hope to accomplish?" Think of this more as the natural consequence of the state's (and media's) actions. I'm not asking anyone to condone destruction and looting, but it's important to view the rioters as people who deserve understanding and compassion before dismissing them out-of-hand. Someone on another forum I read said this, and I think it's an excellent summation of the topic: "I don't think violence will necessarily solve any problems but I also cannot blame a race of people who are being systematically oppressed and murdered for being angry enough to throw bricks at their killers."

Slate writer Jamelle Bouie also said it well:
"...one can both disagree with an act but also understand the impulse behind it.

Shocking, I know." (https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/592899257797111808)

This is a very complex and charged subject, and I'm not making any assumptions about anyone's statements or thoughts here. But I really believe we can't have a discussion about this unless we're willing to address the question of why these things happen. (And by "we", I mean we as a country as much as we in this thread right now.)

Great post. Sums up my thoughts, and adds to them as well. Thank you.

[midwayfair]

A distillation of the past several hours:

Not much bad happened in the afternoon. There were a couple shootings, which were not announced to be connected to any protests. There were some tense confrontations but nothing bad. (The police maced a portion of a large crowd after a single protester threw something at them ...). The gang-related violence was not widespread. There are very large marches now and all the large groups have been peaceful protests. There was nothing I could categorize as a riot today.

A lot of local restaurants offered food to students and police. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about them offering to only one group, but I guess it's best not to invite confrontation.

The west side was described as "one giant street festival." A bunch of marching bands broke out the drums. For the most part, it's impassible by car.

Schools are currently scheduled to be open, but there is a 24-hour youth curfew on a hair trigger.

There are two and a half THOUSAND additional national guard troops being deployed tonight to enforce the curfew. Given the much smaller number that was being reported earlier, I'm actually really happy to hear this news. Fergusson's violence was prolonged by the police enforcing a curfew, and as I wrote earlier, I believe that the NG has a better track record of ensuring peace and can act as a neutral party, as they don't have as much skin in the game as the police or protestors. (Also, I think that the military has better diversity training than the police ... and more diversity.)

The protests are downtown again at City Hall. The night's not over and there are only two hours until the curfew goes into effect. I probably will not update this until the morning.

There are lines of protestors blocking other protestors from the police, so that no one gets in anyone's faces.

Also, if anyone wants to follow this story more closely, there is a live feed on Reddit that's been amazing. Be careful about media accounts, even ones that are "embedded." The City Paper has already been caught posting at least one fake photo, and they slandered someone last night saying that she tried to steal someone's bag and the same reporter claimed that a woman threw a stool at them, but uncut video footage not only shows both of those women defending themselves, but the reporter verbally abusing one of the women. City Paper allegedly blocked some people that asked for comment. I'm not trying to trash City Paper, but they royally screwed up at least twice here, and there are watchdogs on Reddit right now. I don't watch national media and I haven't had time to look at more than a couple articles except to get a sense that opinion cites are crap, but I think the local media is actually doing a good job staying balanced. Some people saying they overreported the riots were probably out cleaning up while the stations were reporting on the clean up. I have yet to find a better source of info than the Reddit live thread. This is related to vizcities's comment about the "drunk Orioles" fans, too. Not to call him out on it, but video footage of the event is ambiguous. It does look like things were thrown from both sides, but the things thrown at or close to people were things like plastic bottles and cups. (I think it's really important that the rioting was mostly confined to property damage. The looting is worse in my eyes.) There have been several accounts of people shouting slurs, but I haven't seen anything that would confirm either side of the story (as far as "who started it") as fact.

I might give one more summary before I go to bed tonight, even if it's just to say that the curfew went into effect in a timely manner. However, there is an extremely large crowd downtown and at the moment I would think that logistically getting everyone home is going to put people on the streets after dark; inevitably, some people will feel harassed. I'm just hoping for isolated incidents only.

Also, I need to correct some information I gave earlier based on more recent numbers and reports from the police department: Although the riots were started by a confrontation between students and police, the age of the rioters went up throughout the night, and a vast majority of the arrested were adults. I'm glad to learn this, because it does mean that most of the kids got/went home safely at some point.

Here is a picture of a cat in an airplane to wash everyone's brain out, if they need it.

[Luke51411]

Vizcities, what's the source on that eyewitness account I didn't see it in the articles you linked. I did just skim them though. that is good information. Never mind I see it was something someone posted on facebook.